TOOL USE, REUSE, AND ORGANIZATION IN COMMAND-DRIVEN INTERFACES
Date
1988-12-01
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Abstract
To handle the diverse implements they wield in their workshops, people
group tools into functional and task-oriented collections, and set
recently-used ones aside for re-use. Surprisingly, these strategies have
not been transferred effectively to interactive computer interfaces. The
chief problem in designing a command interpreter that lets people reuse
and organize their on-line activities is the dearth of knowledge of how
users behave when issuing commands to general-purpose computer systems.
Consequently, existing user support facilities are \fIad hoc\fR designs
that do not really support natural work habits.
Recent studies which examined people's behavior in interactive interfaces
paid undue attention to command choice and not enough to complete command
lines. By examining both aspects, this thesis abstracts general principles
governing how often people repeat their activities from usage data gleaned
from different classes of user over several months. These provide design
guidelines for "history" mechanisms that make old submissions available
for re-use. The problem is to identify likely candidates, and several
ways of conditioning the distribution to enhance predictive power are
evaluated. A case study of actual usage of a widely-available history
system is included.
Users also organize their activities by task and by function. This can
be supported by an on-line "workspace" that allows people to group
tools for related activities. A system loosely based on the metaphor
of a handyman's workbench is described and used to illustrate the
problems that are encountered when facilities to expedite interaction
are bolted on to existing computer systems.
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Computer Science